It's the end of the world as you know it – brought to you by a Gnome Mage with big balls of fire

Uphill both ways in the snow

100 gold, a red power crystal, a couple of xmas recipes and the odd herb.

This was the contents of my Druid’s bags, which doesn’t mean it was all his. This was in reality the sum total of all my characters possessions, including my bank alt, last played 3 months before The Burning Crusade launched.

Years to accumulate 50 odd levels

Years to accumulate 100 gold

Years to afford a few 8 slot bags, a handful of 6 slot bags and rubbish not even a vendor would buy.

Then The Burning Crusade approached, our guild was in trouble, a new Oceanic server came online, and in the quiet of the night 5 players quietly rerolled on the new server.

Gnomeaggedon was born…

Getafixsnow was forgotten.

These were the days before server transfers, race changes, name changes, sex changes or even game changes.

Gnomeaggedon was born in these times as well, but he exploded eager into Outland, where epically powered greens fell from mobs giving five times the XP as the hardest Vanilla boss. Gold nuggets could be found rotting on the ground.

Not long after Gnomeaggedon reached Hellfire Peninsula he had his epic land mount, something that Getafixsnow (and Snowdabow before him) had aspired to, knowing it would be forever out of his reach.

Very soon after, maybe only weeks later, Gnomeaggedon had his first flying mount.

Apart from careful planning to earn or buy the mats for his Frostfire Set which involved a bit of AH play, Gnomer never lacked for gold and still doesn’t.

Now Getafixsnow was reborn, with barely a penny to his name by Cataclysm standards.

It was enough to get him started. Skills learned (or relearned – more on that in another post), epic mount purchased. Not enough to purchase these new fangled glyphs, but there are worse things.

Equipped in a mix of level 30-40 gear, Getafixsnow set off to level and redress his finical situation.

Accepting a random guild invite he was suddenly surrounded by hundreds of TBC, Wrath and Cataclysm babies. People that didn’t understand how good they had it these days.

Only a couple of hours later I was expressing the differences in the economy.

Not only had I leveled purely by filling my bags with herbs and leather destined for the Auction House, but the proceeds from those sales gave me enough to purchase basic flying.

As I once again reduced by bank balance to 1 gold piece, I noticed someone begging in guild chat…

IN GUILD CHAT!

Next he was whispering me. A level 7 character needed two stacks of linen cloth and needed me to purchase it for him.

NEEDED!

I quickly and quietly set him right. Linen being level appropriate for him, 30 minutes of grinding humanoids and he would have his stacks.

What’s wrong with the youth of today?

I didn’t log on saying I had been in suspended animation for 4 years, had as much gold as the average level 30 and needed some gold to buy my skills… I just did it!

Ten levels after rebirth I got my next shameful youth shock.

I was questing in Hellfire Peninsula (btw, I never completed a quest outside of HFP before leaving for Northrend… WTF?), when I saw a guildy begging for help to help him level.

He was a DK… a DK doesn’t need help… ever… I ignored his request.

Moments later, while picking up my next set of HFP quests, I got a random, blind, party invite.

I accepted it. It was a 50/50 decision, feeling positive, my subconscious clicked accept rather than decline. I had no real desire to be in a party, but whatever.

I noticed we shared a couple of quests, unfortunately collection quests, but whatever.

Party chat lit up…

Thanks for joining my party, just need some help leveling… Ohh you are in my guild, I was just asking there!

/groan

10 mobs later, 1 quest item later, I checked something…

Loot = Free for all

WTF!

I said as I quit group.

When this guy said he wanted some help, helping him level, he meant

Helping HIM level.

A self-sufficient DK, sponging off a level 50 geared Druid… Kids these days…

Around level 65 I remembered I wasn’t alone Hordeside. I had a level 1 Troll, rolled purely to help Gnomeaggedon find the Lost Isles the morning after the Cataclysm (Something that required me to log in multiple times… My memory is bad… Bad I tell you!)

The presence of a friendly toon on the server changed everything. I had a mule! I took my Alliance-side AH Alt so much for granted that I forgot to get one Horde side.

This remedied, and a switch from skinning to mining and the gold started to rain from the sky, as did the XP.

Just over a week later, a few things have changed.

I am over 20 levels stronger.

I have all my glyphs and riding abilities.

I am a Veteran of Wrathgate

I have gold in the bank.

Although I have probably spent in the vicinity of 15,000 gold, I have earned that and several thousand more in just over a week… In Vanilla I only had 100 gold to my name after 50 odd levels.

Times have changed…

Don’t offer a beggar a gold.

Tthese days they can earn everything the will ever need by walking out the front gates of Orgrimmar or Stormwind.

Anyway, I’m off to do backstroke in my pools of gold.

Gnomer and Out!

PS: I just took a look at my very 1st character’s gold holdings. He was abandoned at level 51. I had a bank alt there, a herb gatherer also by the name of Getafixsnow… combined gold savings:

in all the years i’ve been playing, i’ve only recently (like, in the past 2 weeks or so) managed to top 20,000g. everyone always says that gold rains from the sky, but i wish i knew how. i get gold, and even with 20k i’m not wanting for much, but i acquire it very, very slowly. i guess it could be worse. then again, i remember being a very new player and having a level 50 (!!) guildy — an unthinkably high level to me at the time — run me through deadmines. afterwards, as i was thanking her, SHE gave ME a gold piece. a whole gold piece! i was floored. it was an amazing amount to me at the time. i’ll never forget that feeling, lol.

Ha…when I first started the game, about two weeks into playing, I was maybe level 8 or something and near death-by-Murloc in Elwynn when some friendly, max-level fellow came by and saved me. Then he gave me 10 gold and wished me good luck. I remember thinking “Wow, I will never need for money ever again.” Ha. I made that 10 gold last for the nearly the next 40 levels.

Reminds me of when I got back into WoW after a long hiatus in Vanilla. I decided to give it a second try late in Vanilla and rolled a druid with a friend on a new server. We started a guild and ended up with all sorts of people. I was randomly whispered by a level 40,,,a 40 wtf does a 40 want with a level 20 something druid? “Mind coming to BB with me?” What’s BB? “LOL Booty Bay!” Okay, I’ll go. “Do you know where Ratchet is?” No. “Okay, follow me on this guy.” Needless to say we got to Ratchet and Booty Bay where he has me visit an AH and gives me a bit of gold and a couple items. White items…yes I was like “wtf??!?!”. He tells me to put them on the AH for an outrageous price. I do and he logs again. This time I see the auction purchase deal. I see a couple thousand gold come to my mailbox. Then he tells me to take the gold and buy bags that he’s put up. So I do and give him the bags and gold. I get an even split of gold and bags. He says he mainly plays Horde, but has made an Alliance alt and needed someone gold and bags to get started. The vastness of the WoW world hit me then and there. The only other time I felt that feeling was entering Darnassus for the first time on a Night Elf hunter. All the max level characters and then mounts…yeah I was hooked on WoW until my college blocked it!

Thinking that few thousand gold from some random guy was a lot compared to now I have alts with easily double that amount. Thanks for the reminder of how far WoW’s economics and gold have come! :)

4.0 I went back to the ancient remains of my horde alts on Blackrock and rolled a troll druid, just training all the new spells from the last 5 years on ancient alts was going to cost more then they had. A week later I stopped playing the druid @ level 20 with 6k gold from selling food.

But generally as long as I have “enough” gold, Currently 200k, i tend to be fairly extravagant, be it epics or 310% flying for alts and I am looking forward to crafting 365 weapons for them.

Gold used to be a such rare thing I remember gleefully stuffing diseased offal from mobs that never bathed in the hopes of getting a couple of silver at the end of the day from vendoring the lot. Now you throw a piece of gold on the ground and the Orgrimmar police write you a fine for littering…